“Okay, your turn,” she said as she flaked off a piece of fish.
He shoved the food around on his plate. She never thought about the past and that’s all he could think about. “Mine involves my family, too. My mother.”
Mackenzie angled toward him on the settee. He felt himself moving slightly toward her, as well. Her knee brushed his leg, and she left it there. He was careful not to move and break the contact when he began to speak.
“I grew up in Europe and we traveled a lot, as well, given my father’s occupation. He was a politician of sorts. One night—day, I mean, when the Council was in session, my mother took us to a small art gallery in the plaza. Many artists had taken up residence in Paris at the time.”
“Oh, like who?”
Shit. Of course, she knew art history. He couldn’t very well name any of the 19th-century artists his mother knew, some of whom Mackenzie most certainly would be familiar with.
“Nobody famous. She, like you, loved the whole atmosphere of creativity, although she didn’t have artistic talent as you do. When we went into the gallery, an old man with a terribly crooked spine swept my mother into his arms and twirled her around the room. He was so fragile-looking, I wouldn’t have believed he could move that way. My mother laughed and I can remember dancing around the room with them. Turned out, she had posed for him and the painting sold for quite a large sum of money. It was a nude.” He ran the backs of his fingers over her arm and thought he felt her tremble.
“And your father...he was all right with your mother posing nude for someone?”
“Although my father was a very jealous man, the old man was a dear family friend, very talented, but very poor. He refused to take any monetary help from my father. So he and my mother came up with the idea of her posing for him. He was known for—He made enough money to barely scrape by with his paintings at the time, but at least my parents felt they were helping.”
“You said ‘we.’ Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“I have a sister who lives in the UK. But it was my brother who was with me at the gallery.”
“And where does he live?”
“I...uh...do not know. We are not close.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment, thinking. “When did you last see him?”
His chest tightened, an iron fist squeezing his heart into a ball. “Many, many years ago.”
She clasped both of his hands and brought his fingers to her lips as if she were trying to take away his pain. “And your parents? Where are they?”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her touch was comforting. “They died a long time ago.”
A gentle caressing of energy passed from her hands to his and the knot in his chest, which bunched up whenever he thought about his parents, actually loosened a bit. When he looked down into her eyes, it wasn’t pity he saw, but understanding.
Her thoughts whispered inside his head as she wrapped her arms around him, soaking up his sorrow with every whirling stroke of her hand against his back. He held on to her, burying his nose in her hair, breathing the coconut smell of her shampoo. Unlike him, with his probing questions, she knew when words weren’t enough. He felt like a lumbering bastard.
In a span of time that seemed to pass as quickly as a dozen human heartbeats, powerful in its simplicity, yet way too fleeting, they finished their dinners and started in on a second bottle of Viognier. If her empty plate was any indication, Mackenzie had thoroughly enjoyed what Dom prepared for her. He rested his chin in his hand and watched, enthralled, as she took another piece of bread and swept up the remaining saucefrom her plate. She licked a stray crumb from her lips and her eyelids fluttered shut while she slowly chewed, as if she were committing the taste to memory.
“I hope you’re not too full for dessert,” he said.
“Never. I always have room for something sweet.” Her eyes held his for a moment before her cheeks colored that enchanting shade again and she looked away.
He returned a moment later with one plate and an enormous piece of coconut cream pie.
“No, you didn’t,” she gasped. Was she surprised he’d heard her say she loved coconut? Or that he remembered? “I must be in heaven. Did you make it?”
“I wish, but no. I picked it up from Tom Douglas’s restaurant.”
“This is his Triple Coconut Cream Pie? I’ve heard how good it is, but I’ve never actually had it myself.” She dug into the thick cream and moaned when she pulled the empty tines from her lips. The sound she’d made was almost identical to the one she made when she came against his fingers that night at the auction. Dom shifted in his seat to make a little more room in his jeans.
“Are you not having any?” Whipped cream lingered on her lips.
“No, I don’t do sweet. Not usually.”
“You mean you got this just for me?”
He nodded.
